The Fifth Wheel

The Fifth Wheel, by Olive Higgins Prouty

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Title: The Fifth Wheel A Novel
Author: Olive Higgins Prouty
Release Date: October 2, 2006 [EBook #19436]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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THE FIFTH WHEEL
[Illustration: "'Why, Breck, don't be absurd! I wouldn't marry you for anything in the world'"--Page 24]

THE FIFTH WHEEL
A NOVEL
BY OLIVE HIGGINS PROUTY
AUTHOR OF "BOBBIE, GENERAL MANAGER"
[Illustration]
WITH FOUR ILLUSTRATIONS BY JAMES MONTGOMERY FLAGG
NEW YORK FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY PUBLISHERS

Copyright, 1916, by FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
Copyright, 1915, 1916, by THE PHILLIPS PUBLISHING COMPANY
All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign languages.

DEDICATED TO MY MOTHER

CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. RUTH VARS COMES OUT 1
II. BRECKENRIDGE SEWALL 10
III. EPISODE OF A SMALL DOG 18
IV. A BACK-SEASON D��BUTANTE 27
V. THE UNIMPORTANT FIFTH WHEEL 36
VI. BRECK SEWALL AGAIN 44
VII. THE MILLIONS WIN 50
VIII. THE HORSE-SHOW 56
IX. CATASTROPHE 69
X. A UNIVERSITY TOWN 80
XI. A WALK IN THE RAIN 90
XII. A DINNER PARTY 101
XIII. LUCY TAKES UP THE NARRATIVE 112
XIV. BOB TURNS OUT A CONSERVATIVE 124
XV. ANOTHER CATASTROPHE 135
XVI. A FAMILY CONFERENCE 142
XVII. RUTH GOES TO NEW YORK 156
XVIII. A YEAR LATER 166
XIX. RUTH RESUMES HER OWN STORY 177
XX. THE FIFTH WHEEL GAINS WINGS 181
XXI. IN THE SEWALL MANSION 198
XXII. THE PARADE 206
XXIII. AN ENCOUNTER WITH BRECK 212
XXIV. THE OPEN DOOR 222
XXV. MOUNTAIN CLIMBING 232
XXVI. THE POT OF GOLD 239
XXVII. VAN DE VERE'S 248
XXVIII. A CALL FROM BOB JENNINGS 258
XXIX. LONGINGS 266
XXX. AGAIN LUCY NARRATES 274
XXXI. RUTH DRAWS CONCLUSIONS 282
XXXII. BOB DRAWS CONCLUSIONS TOO 291

ILLUSTRATIONS
"'Why, Breck, don't be absurd! I wouldn't marry you for anything in the world'" Frontispiece
FACING PAGE
"'Men seem to want to make just nice soft pussy-cats out of us, with ribbons round our necks, and hear us purr'" 128
"Straight ahead she gazed; straight ahead she rode; unafraid, eager, hopeful; the flag her only staff" 170
"I was the only one in her whole establishment whom she wasn't obliged to treat as a servant and menial" 202

THE FIFTH WHEEL
CHAPTER I
RUTH VARS COMES OUT
I spend my afternoons walking alone in the country. It is sweet and clean out-of-doors, and I need purifying. My wanderings disturb Lucy. She is always on the lookout for me, in the hall or living-room or on the porch, especially if I do not come back until after dark.
She needn't worry. I am simply trying to fit together again the puzzle-picture of my life, dumped out in terrible confusion in Edith's sunken garden, underneath a full September moon one midnight three weeks ago.
Lucy looks suspiciously upon the portfolio of theme paper I carry underneath my arm. But in this corner of the world a portfolio of theme paper and a pile of books are as common a part of a girl's paraphernalia as a muff and a shopping-bag on a winter's day on Fifth Avenue. Lucy lives in a university town. The university is devoted principally to the education of men, but there is a girls' college connected with it, so if I am caught scribbling no one except Lucy needs to wonder why.
I have discovered a pretty bit of woods a mile west of Lucy's house, and an unexpected rustic seat built among a company of murmurous young pines beside a lake. Opposite the seat is an ecstatic little maple tree, at this season of the year flaunting all the pinks and reds and yellows of a fiery opal. There, sheltered by the pines, undisturbed except by a scurrying chipmunk or two or an inquisitive, gray-tailed squirrel, I sit and write.
I heard Lucy tell Will the other day (Will is my intellectual brother-in-law) that she was really anxious about me. She believed I was writing poetry! "And whenever a healthy, normal girl like Ruth begins to write poetry," she added, "after a catastrophe like hers, look out for her. Sanitariums are filled with such."
Poetry! I wish it were. Poetry indeed! Good heavens! I am writing a defense.
I am the youngest member of a large grown-up family, all married now except myself and a confirmed bachelor brother in New York. We are the Vars of Hilton, Massachusetts, cotton mill owners originally, but now a little of everything and scattered from Wisconsin to the Atlantic Ocean. I am a New England girl, not the timid, resigned type one usually thinks of when the term is used, but the kind that goes away to a fashionable boarding-school when she is sixteen, has an elaborate coming-out party two years later, and then proves